Walkthrough:28. A Place of Rest
Alright people, this one is a toughie. You're up against two Pigs who start rather close to you, have a large monetary advantage on you, and promise to be a constant threat to your every movement. I have tried and failed this mission twice trying to engage one Pig over the other. You have to kill both their men and troll them at once. This is the only way that has worked for me. You need to set up fast, so pause/Esc shenanigans or slowing game speed are beneficial. After building Trading Post, Stockpile, Granary, and Armory like normal, buy in 15 bows, 5 stone, then build a Barracks, Engineer's Guild, and field two engineers and all 15 archers. Now let's talk about our chokepoints. There are five ways to get into your little encampment, in clockwise order. Entry I being the one near the west end of the map, facing north. II is to the right of it facing north-northeast, III to the right of that, IV to the right of that facing southeast, and V on the southwest corner of the map facing east. Just past entry III (as close to the Pigs as you can) you need to build a square tower, and on top of it several braziers and a mangonel (perhaps a ballista is better; use your own judgment). Race all your archers up there and man the siege equipment, set it to shell the northwestern Pig's Granary. If you placed the tower correctly, your men can fire on both Pigs. For economy, I placed several woodcutters, a couple Apple Farms (which were replaced later), a Hops Farm, 2 Wheat Farms, quarries and iron mines as I could afford the wood, as well as a brewery, inn, two fletchers (set to bows) and mills and bakeries after wheat came in. The first few minutes are critical. One or perhaps both Pigs will bring all they have to bear in crossbows, catapults, and macemen. Make sure you destroy your bottom stair step so macemen can't climb your tower. Allow your siege weapon to target a keep if resistance is too great. If your archers can kill all the crossbowmen and catapults brought to bear, you will have won. If your men die before they can kill all opposition, you will have lost. Do anything necessary to reinforce your archers if things start looking bad. This will be hard, and probably require some luck, but when all is said and done one or both Pigs will have no gold left and the other will have no urge to fight you. Now you just have to seal the deal. Use your starting Spearmen (or make some more) to destroy any enemy iron mines or quarries that stop you from building your own. Hopefully after a while they'll stop attacking your quarries and mines and you can sell iron and stone to get some security. How you defeat each Pig is up to you, but for me I noticed the northwest Pig had a lot of money and a full Armory but almost no units so he seemed like an easy target. I sent some slaves to the southeast farms until I cleared enough land for a cathedral, which I used to both crank up taxes and build up a cheap force of 50 monks (monks being the poor man's macemen, and snce there was little crossbow resistance). Moving the monks away from the cathedral as they spawned (as the other Pig would snipe them) I approached from the orange Pig's west side. After smashing the wall, Armory, and Granary in one go I was able to kill him with this force. I built another cathedral on the corpse of the first Pig and produced an army of 150 monks. Perhaps during your play through your opponents will have more ranged units to defend in which case macemen may be more prudent, but I found that 150 monks killed the second Pig without a problem. Remember to not let either build up crossbows or catapults to oppose you in the first 15 minutes and you're golden.